مجله طب سنتی اسلام و ایران
سال دهم شماره 4 (پیاپی 40، زمستان 1398)

Along with oil exploration in 1909 and drilling of the first oil well in the Masjid Suleiman, social needs such as housing and health care were prioritized by the British-Iran Oil Company to provide the necessary facilities to improve productivity and maximize profits. Among the company's actions was the construction of a pharmacy and a hospital as a place to provide health services to its (Iranian/foreigner) employees, workers and their families.
One of the features of Masjid Suleiman Hospital is its integrated death certificate system. The Oil Company has provided certificates of death to the authors from the winter of 1971 to spring 1979. This study intends to provide a descriptive report on the sex, employment (employed/retired/dependent) and causes of death using the data recorded in these certificates.
The data of 326 certificates were analyzed using SPSS software. In terms of gender, 140 women (42.9%) and 186 men (57.1%) were between 0 to 115 years old and the average age was 55 years (9 persons were not included in the calculation due to lack of recording date of birth). In terms of employment, 57 persons (17.5%) were employed, 18 were retired (5.5%), 233 were dependent (71.5%), and 18 were the others except these (5.5%). In terms of age, 132 (40.5%) people in the age group of 65-84 had the highest frequency and 5 (1.5%) people in the age group of 19-24 had the lowest frequency. In terms of cause of death, the highest rate allocated to heart attack (myocardial infarction) and stroke with 71 persons (21.8%), cancer 58 persons (17.8%), infections and heart failure 46 persons (14.1%), and the lowest rate related to cardiac arrest with 1 person (0.3%) and congenital diseases with 2 persons (0.6%). In terms of age and cause, the most common cause of death in the age group of over 45 years is stroke and heart attack (myocardial infarction), whereas in the age group of 25-44 years, cancer is the leading cause of death.

The presence of the oil industry in the southwest of Iran caused the residents of this area and those who came from different parts of Iran to work in oil company develop a new social context in the Oil company townships and become acquainted with the modernization and modern urban manifestations much earlier than their other compatriots, and discover the experience of using these urban amenities. Among these facilities were medical centers that many local residents had not seen before anything like it and hence it was called "Hospital" from the very beginning. The history of establishing the first hospital in oil-rich regions of Iran goes back to the presence of a British physician named Yang who accompanied the first group of oil explorers. The British physician beside practicing medicine for Drilling groups and providing medical care and treatment services to local tribes and communities (in order to make Company popular among them), had also dealt with security duties for the UK. One of the most prominent figures of Iran's petroleum industry is the late Ali Nahavandi, a loving ophthalmologist and practitioner, which introducing his efforts and stating his services during his presence  for nearly half a century in the oil-rich regions of the South, specifically Masjid Suleiman, is the content of this article.
Nahavandi served at the Petroleum Hospital until his 84th birthday celebration and during this half-century service, he had no purpose of working in the petroleum industry except to love and serve the people. Services that addressing some of them, based on the author's in-person interview with him during his lifetime, residents of Masjid Suleiman and his colleagues, as well as records in the Nahavandi personnel file (accessed through the Petroleum museum and documents sincere cooperation) are some sources of this article.

Developing and expanding the scope of oil exploration and refining operations, and increasing number of workers and migrants in the new cities of Masjed-Sulayman and Abadan, caused healthcare to be considered attentively since the first year of the emergence of the oil industry.
In Abadan, the Outpatient Clinical Center (O.P.D) and then the oil hospital, known as Hospital No. 2, initially operated with foreign medical and administrative staffs (English and Hindi), but the process of localization was inevitable.
For this purpose, the School of Nursing of the British-Iran Oil Company was established in 1921, and was renamed to the School (institute) of Nursing of the National Iranian Oil Company after upgrading to a higher educational level and nationalization of the oil industry.
The institute was a center for training Nurses and Practical Nurses (care assistant) for working in Abadan Oil Hospital, refinery industrial medicine, health clinics in oil and gas fields and other centers.
In Abadan Nursing School, various text and printed materials were used as textbooks, many of which were in the form of a booklet. One of these cases is a booklet held in the library of Abadan Oil Hospital.
In this essay, with a brief look at the history and timeline of nursing education in Abadan and oil-rich regions, we present a new document from Abadan Nursing School and reread the full text in the end.

Addressing the history of healthcare and treatment of Iran's oil industry, is dealing with the oldest healthcare system in Iran. In order to address this history, it is necessary to consider the design and evolution of the system from various perspectives, one of which will be a biographical review. Accordingly, in the present article, with a biographical approach, we have dealt with student life and the role of Morris Yang, one of the first physicians of the Iranian-British oil company, who lived in Iran for several years.
This article tries to fill in some of the shortcomings in biographical studies about the first practitioners of the healthcare system in Iran. This study shows that medical knowledge, regardless of its scientific position, has had a profound social base among Iranian people in nineteenth-century, according to which a "foreign" physician has deeply entered into the Iranian community. This study shows that history of medicine in Iran, as an interdisciplinary knowledge should be deliberated more seriously in Iran.

Over the course of history, contagious diseases have caused many fatalities in Iran. The lack or shortage of medical and treatment facilities have contributed to the prevalence and epidemic of these diseases. The geographical location of Iran and the busy borderlines, especially at Maritime boundaries, transmitted these diseases more than ever. During the Qajar period, the efforts of European physicians formed the first healthcare facilities in Iran, and quarantine on the borders was considered as a major solution to dealing with contagious diseases. At the same time, in the oil-rich regions of south, the Iran-British oil company was recognized as responsible for the establishment, maintenance and monitoring of public health and the fight against contagious diseases in the region. Oilfield regions, like other areas, were not safe from the incidence and outbreaks of diseases, and the Iran-British oil company was forced to provide medical services in its operational areas. Among these were the establishment of the first hospital in the region and providing health services in this field. This paper focuses on cholera and plague as infectious diseases in the mentioned period, examining the health and medical status of the early years of the oil exploration operations.

The plague, cholera, typhus, typhoid, tuberculosis and many other contagious diseases have been the nightmare of the Iranians, a nightmare that has claimed the lives of many men and women every few years and malaria has been an incubus of southern people. Khuzestan heat, southern humidity, water pollution and lack of sanitation facilities were causing these diseases to increase death toll in Khuzestan. When the British-Iranian oil company started to hire workers, the spread of each single disease was a blow to the fledgling industry. Therefore, healthcare in the petroleum industry is as old as oil exploration in Iran, and from the outset, part of the cost was devoted to the prevention and control of contagious diseases and one of the first preventative measures was to quarantine ports to prevent the entry of sick workers.
Although the oil company has prioritized healthcare from the outset, it seems the company's priority has been more to protect the health of its British staff than to promote the health in the southern regions, and more so as a charity rather than a duty. However, through time, the rise of public awareness, and especially after the 1933 agreement, the development of the health of oilfields became one of the responsibilities of the Oil Company. The main issue in this paper is to examine the approach of the Oil Company to the issue of public health in the southern oil-rich regions. The question is whether the approach of the Oil Company to the issue of health has changed between the oil exploration in 1285 until the nationalization of the oil industry in 1329 with the increase of central government supervision and raise of public awareness or not.

Considering 1908 the base for oil exploration, it can be asserted that with the presence of Dr. Yang, the Petroleum Health Organization was formed about one hundred and ten years ago and the enormous bases on which it was founded still stand firm after a century. Petroleum (Oil) Health has many features that can be introduced as an efficient and effective model in the country and used as a pilot study by the Ministry of Health and Medical Education and other health organizations in the country. A review of the history of Petroleum (Oil) Health and treatment shows that despite the many vicissitudes in the status of the organization, what has been evident all these years is the systematic and inclusive view of the founders of this ancient organization to man and his pains. They viewed health as a whole, a vision that did not conceive of maintaining the health of the oil industry's employees apart from the health of other people that lived next to them and the health of the city in which they were residents. Plans that have been formulated and implemented at the time seem surprising: attention to water hygiene and providing safe drinking water, malaria eradication programs, localized plan to fight tuberculosis, monitoring food hygiene in industrial cities and operating areas , engaging in disease prevention programs (including vaccination, screening), and not neglecting to educate clients and insured people on comprehensive and rigorous programs in the field of industrial medicine and occupational health, Recruiting the most efficient educated medical personnel from universities inside and outside the country, Providing training courses for physicians and other health care workers at home and abroad, convene annual scientific congresses in the field of petroleum medicine and health based on information obtained from industry personnel’s health indicators and their compliance with the latest medical developments in the world and finally providing services to residents of industrial cities not employed in the oil industry.